Tradition · monastic dance tradition · India
Sattriya, Majuli
Also known as Majuli — Sattriya sattra network
The Sattriya dance-and-music tradition at the sattras (monasteries) of Majuli river island in Jorhat district, Assam — the devotional performance tradition founded by Srimanta Sankardev (1449-1568) and his disciple Madhavdev as part of the Ekasarana neo-Vaishnava movement. Sattriya combines Sanskrit-Assamese dance, Brajavali-language music (Sankardev's artificial literary language), masked theatrical plays (Ankiya Nats), and the Bhaona religious performance. The 22 sattras of Majuli (Auniati, Dakhinpat, Garamur, Kamalabari, Natun Samaguri, Uttar Kamalabari, and 16 others) are the central institutions preserving the tradition. The 2000 Sangeet Natak Akademi recognition of Sattriya as the eighth classical dance form of India — the most recent addition. The 2003 Majuli UNESCO Intangible Heritage nomination remains in progress. The Majuli sattras hold the Rasa Lila festival each November for 5-7 days.
- Date
- 1500–2026
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Condition
- living practice
- River basin
- Brahmaputra
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 26.950, 94.170
Connections (4)
- Canonised by textShankaradeva
Sattriya is the only one of the eight classical forms that never left the building it was made for. Shankaradeva composed the Ankiyā Bhāonā plays, the Borgeet songs and the dance together in the sixteenth century as one liturgy, and the Majuli sattras have performed them without a break since. It was recognised as classical in 2000, which changed nothing about how it is danced.
- AnalogueChhau, Seraikela and Mayurbhanj
Both are masked or semi-masked dance-dramas of the eastern belt that survived inside an institution rather than a market: Sattriya inside Majuli's monasteries, where Shankaradeva made performance part of the daily liturgy, and Seraikela Chhau inside a princely court that trained and danced it itself. Where the institution went, the form went with it — the sattras still teach Sattriya, and Seraikela's court dance has had to be maintained by the state since the princely order ended.
- Patronage networkSualkuchi silk, Kamrup
Sualkuchi's weaving grew under the Ahom kings and alongside the Vaishnava sattras of Shankaradeva's movement, which needed silk for the ritual cloth, the bhaona costume and the gosain's seat. A monastic order and a weaving town on the same river fed each other for four centuries, and muga silk remains the fabric of Assamese ceremonial dress — the mekhela sador in which the golden thread is the whole point.
- Site withinMajuli
Sattriyā, the eastern-Vaiṣṇava dance drama of Assam, grew in the sattras — the island monasteries founded by Śrīmanta Śaṅkaradeva and Mādhavdev in the 15th-16th centuries on Majuli, the great mid-channel island of the Brahmaputra. Majuli remains the heartland of the tradition; the surviving sattras of Kamalabari, Auniati, Garamur, Dakhinpat and Bengenaati teach and perform it daily.
On these journeys
Sources
Sangeet Natak Akademi, Sattriya Music, Dance and Theatre; Sattriya Kendra.
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